The House of Representatives is expected to follow its populist inclinations today when it considers the proclamation on the state of emergency in the three states of the Northeast.

AFTER 178 days of legal gymnastics, the three-member Election Petition Tribunal, led by Justice Andovar Kaka ‘an which sat over the October 20, 2012 governorship election in Ondo State dismissed the 190 paragraph and 403 pages petition of the Action Congress of Nigeria, A C N, candidate, Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), as well as the 1,480 paragraphs statement on oath and 248 page petition of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Chief Olusola Oke, likening their failure to prove their matter convincingly to a game of soccer in which the players had no goal to show for their 90 minutes of play.

Honorable Yau Gwajo-Gwajo is serving his second term as Speaker, Katsina State House of Assembly. In this interview, he says the parliament is not a rubber stamp to the executive even as he speaks on how the lawmakers are collaborating with the Ibrahim Shehu Shema administration to move the state forward.

BY OLALEKAN BILESANMI

ONE of the brains behind the merger that produced All Progressive Congress, APC and a former deputy governor of Jigawa State, Ibrahim Hadejia (who at a time was the state attorney general secretary to the state government), says nobody can stop  an idea whose time has come adding that, by the end [...]

Since the rumour that Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State is nursing an ambition to be the next vice president to a northern presidential candidate in 2015 started circulating, many disturbing developments have occurred. Whether this rumoured ambition is true or not, it is totally irrelevant. The truth is that every Nigerian over the age of 40 is entitled to aspire to be president or vice president of Nigeria.

Comrade Joseph Evah, coordinator, Ijaw Monitoring Group (MIG) and former Publicity Secretary, Ijaw National Congress (INC), in this interview, speaks on the state of the nation. Excerpts:

There is a call by the House of Representatives that Kingsley Kuku and Asari Dokubo should be probed for threatening Nigeria’s unity?
They are only following similar comments in the past from the North. Since there was no sanctions for the previous threat, they felt it is’ a normal thing. So we want the House of Representatives to invite all those that made similar comments since independence in 1960.

ASIDE politics, the burning desire by the South-South governors and their South-East counterparts who met in Asaba, Delta State capital last Sunday towards achieving economic integration was obvious and so expressed during that meeting.

Dr. Olusola Saraki determined the political landscape of Kwara State for more than a generation would have been 80 years old today if he had not died last November. Not even death has stopped the flow of appreciation to a political icon.

Jigawa State is an exception in the country in the sustenance of democratic structures at the local government level with the conduct of regular elections since the advent of the Sule Lamido administration.

The proclamation of state of emergency in three states without the removal of the governors of the affected states is a break from the tradition of the past.

There was no doubt that the Senate President, David Mark and other principal members of the Senate in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, were privy to the decision to proclaim state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states before the commencement of last Tuesday’s plenary. Any doubt was betrayed by the mood of the affected officers in the chamber while deliberation on issues of the day lasted on Tuesday.

CHief Fred Agbedi is the Special Adviser to the Bayelsa State governor on Political Matters. In this interview in Yenogoa, he speaks on the strides of the present administration, the electoral space in Bayelsa and agitations on the state’s most famous son, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to seek a second term in office as president of Nigeria. Excerpts:

The administration in Oyo State as in other states perpetuates the practice of illegal caretaker administrations for its local councils it has, however, set the pace in using legal convolutions in perpetuating the illegality

WHEN Akwa Ibom State Governor Godwill Akpabio was supporting the senatorial ambition of Senator Aloysious Etok in 2007, in the spirit of equity, hardly did he know that he was embarking on a mission that would later degenerate into a messy affair.

BY DAPO AKINREFON

CHIEF Andrew Uchendu is the member representing Ikwerre/Emohua Federal Constituency, Rivers State in the House of Representatives. Uchendu, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in this interview, faults the court ruling that produced  Chief Felix Obuah  as the chairman of the PDP in Rivers State saying that ambitious persons are [...]

BY JIMITOTA ONOYUME

In this interview,  the Leader of Rivers State House of Assembly, Hon Chidi Lloyd, speaks  on the political crisis that is playing out in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state. He describes the recent suspension of  27  members of the House  by the leadership of the party as mere [...]

Elections into the 17 local government councils of the 18 in Edo State were conducted by the Edo State Independent National Electoral Commission (EDSIEC), but Abuja based observers who were not accredited to monitor the April 20, 2013 polls are engaged in a war of words with the EDSIEC over the transparency of the elections.

Questions are trailing the killing of about 60 policemen in Nasarawa State, last week. What led to the deployment of over a hundred mobile policemen in the operation? Was there any fighting going on there? Was that the last option left to arrest anybody or group suspected to be carrying any act of criminality by the police? Where was the intelligence aspect of the police? How many people were they going to arrest before deploying such a large number of armed mobile police with eleven operational vehicles? What is Ombatse group all about? Is it a cult group? Was that the first attempt to arrest such group in Nasarawa?